Cambridge Essays on Education eBook

THE DIRECT STUDY OF CITIZENSHIP

The study in schools of civic relations has been developed
to a much greater extent in America than in England.
This is probably due largely to the fact that the
American need is the more obvious. In normal
times, there is a constant influx of people of different
nationalities to the United States whom it is the aim
of the government to make into American citizens.
At the same time there is in America a greater disposition
than in England to adapt abstract study to practical
ends, to link the class-room to the factory, to the
city hall, and to the Capitol itself. As one of
her scholars says:

Both the inspiration and the romance
of the scholar’s life lie in the perfect
assurance that any truth, however remote or isolated,
has its part in the unity of the world of truth
and its undreamed of applicability to service[1].

There are in America numerous societies, among them
the National Education Association, the American Historical
Association, the National Municipal League, the American
Political Science Association, which are working steadily
to make the study of civics an essential feature of
every part of the educational system. Their prime
purposes are summarised as follows:

(1) To awaken a knowledge
of the fact that the citizen is in a
social environment whose
laws bind him for his own good;

(2) To acquaint the
citizen with the forms of organisation and
methods of administration
of government in its several
departments[2].

They claim that this can best be done by means of
bringing the young citizen into direct contact with
the significant facts of the life of his own local
community and of the national community. To indicate
this more clearly they have applied to the study the
name of “Community Civics.”

The argument that a sense of unreality may arise as
a result of the apparent completeness of knowledge
gained in the school is met by the close contact maintained
all the time with the community outside.

There is unanimity of opinion that civics shall be
taught from the elementary school onwards:

“We believe,” runs the
report of the Committee of Eight of the American
Historical Association, “that elementary civics
should permeate the entire school life of the
child. In the early grades the most effective
features of this instruction will be directly connected
with the teaching of regular subjects in the course
of study. Through story, poem and song there
is the quickening of those emotions which influence
civic life. The works and biographies of
great men furnish many opportunities for incidental
instruction in civics. The elements of geography
serve to emphasise the interdependence of men—­the
very earliest lesson in civic instruction.
A study of pictures and architecture arouses the desire